Microsoft announce that Hotpatching is now available for Windows 11 Enterprise. It’s designed to help protect organisations from cyberattacks, while minimising user disruptions since Hotpatch updates don’t require a PC to be restarted.
Find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/4jfQPrC, along with details on how the technology works and how to get started.
Microsoft announce Purview Data Security Investigations (DSI). This is a solution that enables organisations to rapidly identify and mitigate risks from sensitive data exposure. DSI will be in public preview in late April 2025 and administrators will need to activate Purview PAYG billing and provision Security Compute Units.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/42X9KSk.
Microsoft introduce new Pay-As-You-Go meters for Purview to help customers effectively secure and govern data as it moves into and through AI apps and agents. The meters are available from 1 May, 2025 and billed, as usual, through an Azure Subscription. If you don’t have an Azure Subscription linked to your tenant on 30 June, 2025, then these metered capabilities will stop working.
Find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/42U3HwH.
Microsoft add Windows 10 ESU Cloud Managed licenses to the April 2025 Product Terms. As a reminder, these are aimed at organisations who are managing updates using Intune or Windows Autopatch and will be offered at a 25% discount from the regular ESUs. If you want a refresher on Windows lifecycle management, then this Windows IT Pro video is worth a watch: https://bit.ly/4jIyXFC.
There’s an updated (March 2025) Windows 11 Qualifying Operating System requirements licensing guidance document from Microsoft. It’s an update to a November 2021 document and has a couple of new FAQs: one around the QOS requirements for the new Windows 365 Link device, and another around macOS devices.
Find this updated document here: https://bit.ly/42ufOkZ.
In May 2024 Microsoft announced that Microsoft Entra Permissions Management (MEPM) capabilities were available to be enabled in Defender for Cloud as part of the paid-for Defender CSPM plan. The standalone MEPM product is now being retired – in April 2025 it’s removed from the Product Terms and not available for new EA and direct customers, and won’t be available for new CSP customers from 1 May, 2025. From 1 October 2025 the product will retire, and support will be discontinued.
You can find the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/3RvCcEq, and assurance that nothing will change in the Defender for Cloud experience here: https://bit.ly/42EWNvf.
Microsoft announce the general availability of Security Compute Units that can be used as overage for Security Copilot. Customers provision the regular SCUs as usual but now, if they are exhausted in a particular hour, you can opt in to the consumption of overage SCUs. This can be either an unlimited amount or up to a maximum that you specify. Overage is then charged on a PAYG basis at a rate of $6 per hour compared to the regular price of $4 per hour.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/4cFAry8, and information on managing SCUs here: https://bit.ly/4jsb8lY.
There’s an updated (April 2025) Power Platform Licensing Guide. Microsoft introduced deep reasoning and Agent Flows in Copilot Studio in March 2025 (https://bit.ly/4jmTMH9) and the Licensing Guide is updated for those new innovations. When you implement these in your Agents you consume messages and now there’s a splendid table on page 19 which details the different types of activity and how many messages they consume. There’s also a reduction (from 30 to 10) in the number of messages required for answers grounded in the tenant graph.
Find this updated guide here: https://bit.ly/4j4MMyq.
There are updated (April 2025) Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents with a row added for Copilot Chat, and also updated for Microsoft 365 Business Premium as an eligible prerequisite for Microsoft 365 E5 Security (see our blog: https://bit.ly/42JvfVu).
These useful documents tell you which of the (many) different components are included in which Office 365/Microsoft 365 plan, and there’s a table for SMB customers (https://bit.ly/4lRG14X), one for Enterprise customers (https://bit.ly/3YDt9Fl), and still more for specialist US Government customers – one for GCC (https://bit.ly/4cCaMqc), one for GCC High (https://bit.ly/4ihKc73) and the final one for DoD (https://bit.ly/4cEMJXN).
Microsoft announce the general availability of three Windows 365 innovations – find the article here: https://bit.ly/4k3VcGv, and read on for the summary.
First, Windows 365 Link is now available. This is a purpose-built Cloud PC device that’s designed to connect to Windows 365 in a fast and secure way; you can find out more on our blog here: https://bit.ly/4jwyp6d.
Then there’s Windows 365 Frontline Shared Mode for when you want to provision a single Cloud PC which lots of people need to use for short periods on an ad hoc basis, perhaps for a specific task. Only one person can use the Cloud PC at a time, and you can find out more on our blog here: https://bit.ly/4cOpf2e.
And finally, there’s Windows 365 Disaster Recovery Plus, an Add-on licence for Windows 365 Enterprise for (of course) disaster recovery scenarios. Find out more about that on our blog here: https://bit.ly/42wcy8P.